The Weather Station

The above data is all generated from my backyard weather station in Westford. The core of the system is a Davis Instruments Vantage Pro2 Plus. This station is solar-powered and records:

temperature

dew point

rainfall

wind speed

wind direction

solar radiation

UV radiation

Every 5 minutes the readings are sent by radio to an inside console which is hooked up to the internet. I then use WeatherLink
software to generate charts and automatically push out updates to the web site. This sounds complicated, but in fact runs unattended and has had continuous uptime aside from occasional
power outages. Of course, more than once in a severe storm, the power went out right when it would have been most interesting to have a recording of the wind speed at the time!
(For example, that tree that nearly fell on the station a year ago, knocked down in a storm) So, I'll need to think of investing in a UPS so I can record those instances of severe weather and perform a graceful shutdown.

Station Siting

In order to get the most accurate readings, the siting of the station is critical. Unfortunately, my property is surrounded by trees,including a stand
of 100-foot White Pines to the North. This provides a wind break as well as a rain "shadow" so these two measurements may be off depending on the wind direction.

There is also the issue of the lawn sprinkler in the summer which will understandably be read as rain. I've manually removed such data when I've noticed it.

CWOP

I'm a member of the Citizen Weather Observer Program (CWOP), station ID C3681. I automatically push my observation out to their servers at the same
time I send them to this web site. NOAA's MADIS system them performs quality control of the data and returns feedback on data quality which you can see here.
Once I correctly calibrated the barometric readings by adjusting for altitude, my readings have been scored well (greater than 99%) in terms of quality.

Weather Underground

National Weather Service data

Westford is served by the NWS station in Taunton. Their forecasts are reported here. They also provide a radar loop,
and notifications of current severe weather watches, warnings and advisories. An interesting feature is the log of storm damage (downed trees, flooding, etc.) sent
in from weather spotters across the coverage area.